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Doctor says: Read aloud to kids from day one

For the first time the American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in on early literacy education and have come to recommend that reading aloud to your child should begin at birth. That’s right at birth! Not when they start talking or walking but when they start breathing.

They have asked the 62,000 pediatricians in the U.S. “to become powerful advocates for reading aloud, every time a baby visits the doctor.”

According to a federal government survey of children’s health, 60 percent of American children from families with incomes at least 400 percent of the federal poverty threshold — $95,400 for a family of four — are read to daily from birth to 5 years of age, compared with around a third of children from families living below the poverty line, $23,850 for a family of four.

Income inequality is real and it has consequences.

In addition to income another threat to reading aloud is the emergence of our device society. Many kids now “learn how to swipe before they can turn a page” which really raises the stakes. We cannot afford this to become a endangered activity.

To coincide with the announcement former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a new program at the annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America meeting bringing together the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Scholastic Inc., Reach Out and Read and To Small to Fail “to raise awareness among parents about early language development.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..